In Sickness and in Health
by foojules
Summary: Series 2 AU oneshot. Branson gets Spanish flu after he and Sybil have announced their engagement.


He wakes up.

Or he thinks he does; his thoughts are not proceeding in their usual straight lines. Time slips away without accounting for itself. He blinks, or so he believes, and the light that was in the sky outside his window has turned to darkness. He is dimly aware that he must be ill. His body is consumed in sweat-soaked chills, a bone-deep ache. He hears a torturous whistling rasp and realizes it is his own breath, fighting its way in and out of his poor inflamed lungs.

He can't get a handle on his surroundings. He's not where he was before: not in his cottage. No, that isn't where he last slept. Why was he at the inn?

Darkness. He feels he is burning and drowning at once, and a severe white face appears before him. There always was that small doubt, the feeling that maybe the priests were right, and now it seems they were. "No," he tries to say. "Don't take me—I'm not ready—" but he's too weak to get the words out. He tries not to be afraid but he is.

There is light, and the face of his judge resolves into the kindly one of Mrs. Hughes, pinched with worry. He swivels his head; the bedroom is unfamiliar. And rich. He must be very bad off indeed, if they've brought him upstairs.

He tries to sit up, but can only manage a feeble movement. "Rest, Mr. Branson," Mrs. Hughes says, and her voice is calm, her restraining hand on his shoulder is calm. "You must rest and get better." A cool cloth bathes his forehead. It feels wonderful. He shuts his eyes.

"Sybil," he rasps, and opens them, but he is alone. It's daytime again, shafts of light piercing the gaps between the curtains. He feels as though he has just run ten miles, but he is too tired to sleep. He hurts too much.

He can remember now what's happened: the drawing room, the visit from Sybil's father. He supposes it does Lord Grantham credit that he's not dying alone in a drafty room above the pub. Is he dying? He must remember to ask someone.

He wakes up. Immediately he perceives that his condition has improved: he feels less scattered, more in control of himself. The pain is nearly gone, and he can breathe quite well. He senses a presence in the room with him, turns his head to look into the calm brown eyes of Lady Mary.

He doesn't try to speak, to ask for Sybil. Lady Edith might be persuaded if she were here, but not Lady Mary. She holds his gaze but does not offer a word or a touch. She sits at his bedside, still and silent, until his eyes close again.

Darkness. The chills are back, the aches. He hears moaning. It's irritating, he wishes it would stop. Something catches in his throat and fireworks burst in his head as he collapses into a fit of coughing. Phlegm rattles and blocks the dwindling bolthole that is his airway. He can't breathe and his heart speeds up, for a long moment he panics before it clears enough to let the air through again. Finally he feels a hand at the back of his head, a glass at his lips. "There now, Mr. Branson," Mrs. Hughes says, and she helps him to drink and he manages to surmount the hill that was crumbling underneath him and take another labored breath.

He falls exhausted onto the sweat-soaked pillow. Just breathing takes more strength than he has. But he must ask while he has Mrs. Hughes here. "Sybil?"

She shakes her head and an arrow of pure horror pierces him before she continues, telling him that Lady Grantham and Miss Swire have both been taken ill and Sybil is nursing them. His eyes fall shut in relief.

He descends into restless half-sleep, not sure if the things he sees are real or vision. At one point Sybil is there at his bedside, but that can't be right. They wouldn't let her come to him.

She won't lie to him. "Am I dying?"

Her fingers are so soft and cool on his hand, on his forehead. She shakes her head. Her eyes shimmer.

He tries to squeeze her hand. "Sybil—" he coughs but manages to swallow before it becomes a fit.

"Don't try to talk." She reaches for a damp cloth, blots it on his forehead. She begins to speak, perhaps so that he won't. Carson is out of danger, she says. Mama as well. Lavinia—

The tears that have been hovering at the edges of her eyes streak down her cheeks, and he is selfish enough to be both glad and sorry that they are not for him.

-o-

Sybil does not pray often, having seen so many go unanswered during the war. But she doesn't know what else to do. By the second night it's hardly coherent, a litany running through her head: _Please God don't let him die_, over and over and over. The information she receives about his condition is all at second hand and she almost regrets not carrying out her threat to nurse him at the Grantham Arms, even though she knows he'll get better care here at Downton.

He improves, then worsens again: in her mind she keeps hearing Dr Clarkson say _sudden, savage changes_. They still won't let her see him. And then, suddenly, they will. This fills her with dread.

She can tell how bad it is the minute she lays eyes on him. She reminds herself that Mama looked much worse, and schools her features into a smooth mask even though he's in no shape to read her.

The hours run together. Now that she's with him she doesn't want to leave, for fear that she won't be allowed to come back. She snaps awake, slumped in the wing chair drawn up to the bed, and only slowly realizes that the wheezing sound that pulled her from sleep is still filling the room.

The next moment she's on her feet, leaning over the bed and calling for Dr Clarkson. In the back of her mind she wonders at how calm her voice sounds, as if this is any other patient. As if she isn't screaming on the inside.

Tom's eyes open, wide and bloodshot, dimmed with fever. Scared. He probably doesn't even see her. She talks to him anyway, smooths the damp hair from his forehead. "You're going to be just fine," she tells them both.

In the following minutes it becomes clear to her that he is not going to be just fine. She does what she can with hands that shake only a little. Mrs. Hughes comes in and says that the doctor is on his way before disappearing again. Sybil can feel time stretching and growing shorter all at once, ready to snap like a thread pulled in two different directions, as Tom's face goes grey and his breathing becomes more and more labored. She clutches his clammy hand.

"Don't leave me," she says, and the nurse's voice is gone: hers is the plea of the supplicant. "Please don't leave me here." His eyes open again and this time he does seem to see her. His mouth works and there's a thin rumble from his throat as he tries to speak. "Don't talk," she begs. He needs all the air he can get. A drop of water falls onto his cheek, then another, and Sybil realizes they are her tears.

-o-

His vision's gone all fuzzy, the edges wavy and black like a poorly developed photograph. A face, draped in white and impossibly beautiful, floats above his. Not the pit then. Relief washes over him. He tries to stretch out his hand, to tell the angel—if that's what it is—that he's ready to follow wherever it might take him. But he can't move.

Noise spills into his ears without warning, as though a door has been opened onto a factory floor. At the same moment his chest tightens and panic slams into him. He was floating before; now he has fallen back to earth, the wind knocked out of him and no hope of getting it back. There are people around him and he has the impression that they are working feverishly on something. They're too close. He feels he'd be able to breathe if only they'd give him some room, a glimpse of light.

Then they are gone and, perversely, he wishes them back. "I've done all I can," someone says, the voice sounding like it's coming through a fathom of water. "All we can do now is wait and see."

He is so terribly tired.

-o-

He wakes up.

The first thing he sees is Sybil, her white-capped head pillowed on the wing of her chair. Lamplight falls warm from the bedside table, clashing with the harsher, brighter light slicing between the curtains. She stirs and opens her eyes and he notices the deep shadows under them, understands that it's the change in his breathing that has revived her. He wonders how long it's been since she really slept.

She moves to sit on the bed with no embarrassment, feeling his forehead as she scans his face. "Your fever's nearly gone," she says in the measured tones of the professional. "How are you feeling?"

He has to swallow and clear his throat before he can get anything out, and even then his voice sounds broken. "Like I've been dragged behind the car." He tries on a smile.

She returns it. "Well, you sound like yourself." Her hand is still on his forehead and she strokes it absently as her eyes become unfocused. "It's going to take a few weeks for you to recover completely. You've been very ill." Her gaze flicks to his and in the instant before she covers it he can see the anguish both hidden by and communicated in those four words.

He does not ask whether he'll be allowed to convalesce here, or what her father thinks about all of this. There is only one question he needs answered right now. "You'll stay with me?"

Her answer is swift and definite. "Yes." She takes his hand in both of hers and looks steadily at him. Tom feels a flash of pity for anyone who would try to stop her.


End file.
